What the Hell Is Going On? (4)
Yukhapgong.
“Six Harmony Qi Art.”
Six Harmony meant unity.
Heaven and earth, and all four directions of east, west, south, and north—those were the Six Harmonies.
The Six Harmonies were the world, and the world was the Six Harmonies.
“Hah.”
It sounded grand. Impressive. Almost absurdly so.
So what kind of martial art was this Yukhapgong, really?
A martial art you’d sell for five pun in a back-alley bargain stall.
Not cheap for a secret manual. Cheap even for a book. The kind of martial art that sold for barely more than the price of the paper it was printed on. In plain terms, it was bargain-bin trash.
Whenever thugs and layabouts from the streets decided they wanted to become jianghu heroes too, this was the first book they bought at the shop. It was the martial art people learned on their own when they didn’t want to bother with the strict rules of a Taoist temple or a martial academy and still dreamed of becoming some great master by sheer self-study.
Back when Chung Myung had been active in the martial world, Yukhapgong, Yukhap Gwon, and Samjae Sword were called the Three Great Street Martial Arts. That told you everything you needed to know.
By the time Chung Myung was known as one of the Three Great Swordmasters, it seemed the basic street art had changed to Taiji Fist, but that was the business of the idiots who followed after him.
But why was he learning such a cheap martial art?
Because it wasn’t cheap.
Yukhapgong was Mount Hua’s introductory martial art. Everyone who entered Mount Hua began their training with it.
The reason Yukhapgong had spread beyond the mountain was that one of Mount Hua’s founding masters had boldly released it to the common people under the noble pretense that nourishing life should not belong to Taoist temples alone, but to everyone in the world.
Unfortunately, Yukhapgong did not make a person strong simply by learning it. At most, it made one a little healthier.
Those who failed to see the effects despised it as worthless and cursed Mount Hua for exposing only the shell and withholding the core.
In the end, it had fallen so far in people’s minds that even newly admitted Mount Hua disciples would complain when they learned the first thing they were taught was Yukhapgong.
But Chung Myung knew better.
Yukhap was not some trash martial art. If it really were the worthless thing people thought it was, it would never have remained Mount Hua’s foundational art for hundreds of years.
“Every thing has its proper use.”
Yukhapgong couldn’t skyrocket one’s inner strength. No, to be precise, if you judged it purely by the efficiency of gathering internal energy, it didn’t even reach a tenth of most sects’ basic internal arts.
But Yukhap had one spectacular function that made up for that weakness.
It purified the body of the one who practiced it.
In other words—
“It’s literally a foundation art.”
Foundation.
Foundation work.
Yukhap was the best martial art for refining the dantian and body until they became complete. But because others were busy building up their internal energy while it was still only polishing the dantian, its effects weren’t visible to the eye.
What happened if everyone else ran ahead while you were still crawling along the ground?
Chaos, that’s what.
In the end, even Mount Hua gave up on digging too deeply into Yukhapgong. Because of tradition and history, they let disciples learn it as a basic introductory art, then switched them over to Socheong Gimgong as soon as they seemed to understand how to circulate qi.
Even in his past life, Chung Myung had never clung to some useless thing like Yukhapgong. He had always thought it was a hundred times more beneficial to learn a better internal art during that time.
“It was a hundred times the loss, you bastard!”
That was his greatest regret from his previous life.
If he had not rushed to move on to another internal art, and instead fully mastered Yukhapgong before learning something else, he would have become at least twice as strong.
But once the tower had been built, it was impossible to redo the foundation.
And now, at last, he had been given a chance to undo that lifelong regret.
This time, he would not be impatient. He would work with painstaking care until it was complete, so that the tower he built would be even larger, even more beautiful.
“Huuuup.”
Seated cross-legged, Chung Myung closed his eyes and slowly recalled the formula of Yukhapgong.
When the mind stirred, qi moved.
Through his breath, external qi was drawn into his body. Those just beginning foundation arts normally spent nearly a month merely learning to sense that external qi for the first time, but Chung Myung needed no such process.
The qi that had been pulled in moved slowly along his body under the guidance of Yukhapgong, then settled low in his abdomen.
From here on.
Of course, Chung Myung had no intention of merely learning Yukhapgong at a superficial level. It wouldn’t be bad to simply follow the path his ancestors had laid out, but a man who had already walked a road once could never be satisfied with walking it exactly the same way again.
Make it purer.
Concentrating fully, he filtered out the impurities mixed within the gathered energy.
It was like looking at every single thread in a massive bolt of cloth and picking out each one that was even slightly out of place, removing the impure qi again and again until only the cleanest essence remained.
Perfectly, from the start.
The amount of qi gathered meant nothing. What he needed now was not a speck of impure internal energy, but one perfect grain.
The qi was shaved away. A grain of rice became smaller, and smaller still. After more than half a day passed, what remained was a single, absurdly tiny mote of qi.
As it settled in his lower abdomen, it formed a space so small it was almost embarrassing to call it a dantian.
Flash.
Chung Myung opened his eyes.
“Huuuuuu.”
His face was soaked in sweat. The ragged robes he wore were damp and filthy with the sweat and impurities that had been forced out of his body. They had been dirty to begin with, but now they were even dirtier.
“This is the first time I’ve ever focused so hard while circulating qi.”
But rather than tiring him, it actually felt refreshing. And the result pleased him greatly.
He touched his lower abdomen. The shape was still barely worthy of being called a dantian, but in any case, he had taken the first step toward a perfect foundation.
For now, it was pathetically weak.
Even if you searched through all the history of the jianghu, there probably wouldn’t be anyone who had made a weaker dantian on their first successful circulation than Chung Myung had.
But Chung Myung knew.
This tiny dantian would lead him to another world. That small, complete grain of qi would roll and roll like a snowball until, before long, it became a massive avalanche no one in the world could stop.
Yes. Just like…
That Heavenly Demon bastard.
Chung Myung’s body shivered.
Just thinking about the Heavenly Demon sent a cold chill through him from head to toe.
He wasn’t human.
Overwhelming.
No, even that word failed to describe him properly.
The death squad assembled from the finest warriors of every sect in the world. And that squad hadn’t even aimed at the Demonic Sect as a whole. They had thrown themselves at the Heavenly Demon alone.
The result had been mutual destruction.
To exaggerate only a little, it wouldn’t have been wrong to say the Heavenly Demon had fought the entire world of martial arts by himself.
Maybe…
This time, he might be able to reach that level.
If he devoted himself to everything he was capable of, one by one, without holding anything back.
Chung Myung sprang to his feet.
“Alright, then—”
He wavered.
His body, only half-risen, toppled forward helplessly.
“Huh…?”
What the hell? Had he overdone the circulation and gotten lightheaded?
“Urgh!”
He braced himself on his arms and tried to push up. No, he tried to. But his arms refused to listen.
“Huh?”
His arms twitched.
They spasmed as if he’d been struck by lightning. Those spindly, winter-bare branches of arms trembled miserably before his eyes.
“W-what the hell is this?”
No, that couldn’t be right. If he’d circulated qi, shouldn’t his body be brimming with strength—
“W-wait.”
Chung Myung’s gaze dropped to his own lower abdomen, pressed against the floor.
The purest qi in the world had gathered there, all of it together in a quantity no larger than a smear of ant droppings.
Ant droppings…
The purity of the qi was so exquisite that even Chung Myung, the Plum Blossom Sword Saint himself, had felt his spirits lift—but the amount was miraculously tiny, enough to be exhausted by a single enthusiastic punch from a child.
Which meant—
“No, you damn bastard! That means it won’t help me use my body at all right now!”
Chung Myung clutched his head and rolled across the floor.
You should’ve thought about it first! Thought about it! Your head’s there to think with, so why didn’t you think? Why!
He could almost hear the voice of his senior brother from the Mount Hua sect leader’s line ringing in his ears.
For the love of all that’s holy, think before you act! Think! Why do you always do something first and think later? Why! Use your head to think with, not as a coat hook!
It felt like his rash nature had once again caused the same trouble that had made even that noble Taoist priest resort to talking about his head as a coat hook.
If only he’d known, he would have made it bigger!
“And I’ve got to get all the way back to Mount Hua in this body?”
How far was it from Wuhan to Mount Hua again? Roughly…
“T-two thousand li?”
His eyes nearly rolled back.
Two thousand li?
A normal person who couldn’t even practice martial arts would struggle to travel a hundred li in a day. And he had to go two thousand li in the body of a starving child? Two thousand li?
“Ugh!”
Chung Myung rubbed his face with both hands.
“Damn this cursed life!”
But what choice did he have? He had already made it.
Even if he had known, he still couldn’t have made the dantian much larger. He knew all too well now how taking the easy shortcut for the sake of immediate comfort could become a hidden obstacle that blocked him later.
He would never again sacrifice the future for the present!
…Which was a lot easier said than done.
“Hnghh…”
Chung Myung struggled to his feet.
“What’s life, anyway.”
In the end, all of this was simply suffering he had to bear.
Suffering made heroes!
“There’s nothing you can’t do if you’ve got enough grit!”
Clenching his teeth, Chung Myung started walking toward the road again.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Thud!
“Kuh…”
With his legs giving out, Chung Myung collapsed flat on the spot.
So there really are things grit can’t fix.
What a belated lesson to learn at his age.
Chung Myung had just been reminded that the world contained forces beyond resistance.
The pain in his legs he could endure. Even the body’s screams, he could somehow bear.
But there was one thing he simply could not withstand.
I’m starving to death.
The gnawing hunger scraping at his stomach could not be solved by anything.
In his previous life, he’d thought he was fairly used to hunger. Training sometimes required strict self-restraint. Eating food meant taking in outside qi, but naturally, it also meant taking in impurities along with it.
That was why practitioners of the Way strictly forbade cooked food. During especially grueling training, they would even cut off grains altogether. Chung Myung had also been a disciple of Mount Hua, a Taoist sect, and he’d thought himself somewhat immune to hunger.
No, he had thought himself the sort of person who could handle it.
But Chung Myung hadn’t known.
How huge the difference was between not being able to do something and choosing not to do it!
Enduring hunger when food existed was as different from starving because food didn’t exist as heaven was from earth. Extreme hunger wasn’t something willpower could conquer. It felt like a pack of demons was hacking at his insides with knives.
By sheer stubbornness he’d somehow managed to stagger off the road and into the city, but beyond that he had no strength left for anything. By the time he reached the market street, he had practically crawled the whole way.
To think the first death crisis I’d face after reincarnating would be starving to death.
It was absurd beyond belief.
Who was Chung Myung?
The world’s three great—no, forget it. I’m starving to death here.
He groaned, realizing that the words “starve to death” had stopped being an exaggeration and had become a real and immediate threat.
This wasn’t a joke. He really might die of hunger like this.
He’d tried to catch a wild beast, but that beggar bastard—what was his name, Jongpal or something—had beaten his body so badly that even running properly was impossible.
No, before that, this body had already been on the verge of starvation from the moment he left Wuhan. Maybe it had already died of hunger once.
And now it was in danger of dying a second time.
What do I do?
To get food, he needed money. To earn money, he had to work. But with this body, working was impossible.
Then what the hell…?
Just then—
Clink.
The crisp sound of metal came ringing from somewhere.